Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Analytics

Details

Grafana Labs is looking for a Senior Software (Database) Engineer to help build the underlying storage system for a general-purpose data platform. The database layer will support both OLAP and OTLP capabilities, enabling classic analytics queries while also serving freshly stored data. It embraces the separation of compute and storage and is designed to run across multiple cloud providers.

This is an early-stage role on a high-autonomy team. The successful candidate will be comfortable working through ambiguity, making pragmatic architectural decisions, and building systems that can evolve from internal dogfooding to production-grade SaaS. The team is developing an AI-native data intelligence system that provides agents with reliable, governed access to enterprise context, including data, metadata, definitions, lineage, quality signals, and institutional knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Own and build one or more parts of the database, including ingestion, query planning, distributed query execution, data formats, and storage formats.
• Help define and build the architecture for a scalable, multi-tenant database SaaS, including tenant isolation, usage tracking, quotas, audit logs, background jobs, and reliable service boundaries.
• Build APIs and database interfaces that enable AI agents, MCP tools, CLIs, and internal applications to retrieve data quickly.
• Partner across product and infrastructure teams to make practical trade-offs between rapid experimentation and long-term reliability.
• Instrument database services with metrics, logs, traces, alerts, and dashboards.
• Use observability tools to understand system behavior and improve reliability.
• Help shape architecture, service boundaries, storage choices, API contracts, deployment patterns, and engineering practices for a new product area.
• Communicate effectively and contribute across teams in a dynamic, collaborative environment.
• Take full ownership of database solutions, ensuring they are innovative, scalable, maintainable, and aligned with real user workflows.

Requirements

• Strong experience building production-grade, user-facing software systems.
• Ability to tackle complex engineering problems and make design decisions with minimal supervision.
• Familiarity with AI technologies and frameworks, with a practical focus on delivering high-quality real-world solutions.
• Comfort releasing prototypes, collecting feedback, and iterating quickly.
• Proven initiative and the ability to define scope and drive projects forward in ambiguous environments.
• Effective communication skills and a collaborative, solutions-oriented mindset.
• Experience with distributed systems, catalogs and table formats, and query engines.
• Mastery of a programming language such as Golang, C++, or Rust.
• A proven track record of delivering software that reached production and is actively used by customers.
• Experience working in cloud-native environments such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Experience using observability tools to understand and troubleshoot system behavior.

Bonus Points

• Experience building distributed query engines.
• Experience building data warehouses or data lakes.
• Experience building tools for data engineering.

Work Environment

Grafana Labs is a remote-first, remote-only company. The team meets regularly over video and does most work asynchronously and in writing. The company values creativity, diverse perspectives, clear communication, autonomy, transparency, and ownership.

Compensation and Benefits

• Republic of Ireland base compensation: EUR 104,000–EUR 130,000 per year.
• Equity and bonus, where applicable.
• Global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum, including three Grafana Shutdown Days.
• In-person onboarding.
• Career growth pathways and an empowered, collaborative work culture.

The role is open to applicants located in Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ireland, or Germany.